Heulender Wind

In the organizer's words:

風音 Fûon

Director: HIGASHI Yôichi
2004, 106 minutes, original language, 16 mm

The film is based on a novel by award-winning author Medoruma Shun, who also wrote the screenplay and is from Okinawa.

The story takes place in a village in Okinawa, more than 50 years after the end of the Second World War. The skull of a fallen kamikaze pilot lies at an open gravesite on the coast. When the wind blows through the holes in the skull, a strange howling sound is heard, which the locals call fûon ("howling wind"). A few boys from the village are magically attracted to the mysterious skull and make a bet on it. At the same time, an elderly woman comes to the island to find her former lover, and a fisherman is also confronted with the past, as he still keeps a fountain pen that he stole from the dead pilot.

Movie series
The value of remembering
Japanese films against forgetting

In the current time of change, remembering and commemorating the past is more important than ever. In 2024, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear weapons organization "Nihon Hidankyo", a grassroots movement of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Norwegian Nobel Committee's citation states that the group, founded in 1956, was awarded the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through testimony that nuclear weapons should never be used again.

Japanese film history also addresses the suffering and hardships that people had to contend with in connection with the war. The film series shows works by renowned directors that focus on the fate of individual people.

It begins with a family story based on the notes of a doctor(Kono ko o nokoshite). Music plays an important role in a Japanese soldier's fight for survival (Biruma no tategoto) and on an island, a teacher cares for her pupils(Nijûshi no hitomi). A docudrama depicts true events about a traveling theater group (Sakuratai chiru), followed by the story of a girl who folds cranes in the face of death(Senbazuru). A film about the skull of a kamikaze pilot(Fûon) and a production inspired by the historical figure Onoda Hirô(ONODA, Ichimanya o koete) conclude the program.

Price information:

Admission free